


The Eating of Oysters

by die_traumerei



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Eating, Established Relationship, Other, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), multiple tenses are harder than i thought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-10-01 23:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/die_traumerei/pseuds/die_traumerei
Summary: Their first meal together was oysters, and they still share them now, in this brave new world. Something of a meditation on love, the taste of the sea, and centuries spent together.





	The Eating of Oysters

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little dreamier and more poetic than I usually write, but I'm quite pleased with it. Even after wrestling with weird tenses. There's a bit of fluff too, of course.
> 
> Mostly it's a paen to how much *I* love oysters, if I'm being honest.

Their first meal together was oysters.

How many meals have they shared since then? Aziraphale, with his clever head and his knack for numbers (if HMRC gave out awards, he would win every year), won't even try to count them up. It wouldn't be any fun, anyway; what's the point of the precision when he can so easily remember crepes and frybread, pad thai and fresh salmon, and brambles eaten right off the bush in the gentle summer sun, not so very deep in the Rhondda Valley? Better to have the spice on his tongue, or the burst of a sun-warmed berry. Better to have that first memory of oysters with Crowley.

He had been in a dreadful mood. Just an absolute bastard, really, but Aziraphale had been full of the joys of new things and he didn't much notice Crowley's grumping, he was so happy to see a friend. Rome was, and was always, amazing. Aziraphale was an exotic flower there with his blond hair, and he had taken to the city with all the zeal in his heart. Everything was beautiful, learned, revolutionary and breathtaking, and he had loved it all. Of course he had been happy to see Crowley! It was the dawn of a new world, and Aziraphale was going to grab it up with both hands. And he was going to drag his oldest, most beloved friend with him to help.

Crowley had grumped his way to the restaurant, looking fully out of place, while Aziraphale chattered alongside him, the two of them walking arm-in-arm as friends did in those days. They had sat where they could watch the world go by, and Crowley had eased a little, the tension in his shoulders softening.

“My dear, what's wrong?” Aziraphale had asked him softly as they sipped sweet wine.

“Angel, you don't want to know,” he'd said in a heavy voice, and Aziraphale didn't push. He probably didn't want to know. Instead he'd told Crowley of what he'd seen that day, painting pictures with his words and his hands. 

When Crowley had smiled at him, the world shone just a little bit brighter.

And the food – it was exquisite.

No one has made oysters taste that way again. Roasted, smoked, stuffed – all perfection. But Aziraphale's favourite has always been raw, since the start. (If he dreamed, he would dream of Prunier's, and eating oysters with Crowley while the world held its breath between the wars.)

Aziraphale had been the one to teach Crowley how to eat a raw oyster:

Cut the little ligament that attached the oyster to its shell. Throw it back, swimming in brine, let oyster and sea hit your mouth together. One bite, subtle and sublime flavours hitting your tongue, the grit of sand sometimes between your teeth. And swallow, and taste what's left in your cold mouth, and dream of shallow salt waters under a chill autumn sky.

Even Crowley, who still is not the lover of food Aziraphale is, had looked a little stunned after his first raw oyster.

“You see why I brought you here?” Aziraphale had asked.

Crowley had been lounging by then, his body back to its usual slinky bonelessness. He had grinned, and eaten another oyster. “I see why,” he had said, and pushed the plate to Aziraphale. “Here, you have some too.”

“Like kissing the sea on the lips,” Aziraphale quotes. They've come to this odd little spot, gone all the way into Cornwall for a little weekend holiday. It's autumn and the tourists have gone home, but someone in Aziraphale's knitting circle had sworn by the spot. Crowley is inclined to trust; he had met her when she was dropping off a case of extremely nice scotch her brother made, and said scotch had tasted of peat and sea air and all the things Crowley liked most about Scotland where the land ran out into the sea and the sky.

Besides, watching Aziraphale enjoy oysters is one of the highlights of his life.

“Oh, were you wanting a kiss on the lips?” he asks, and leans in. “Because --”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale laughs, and looks wicked and daring, or at least his version of wicked and daring. “Go on then,” he says.

Crowley at least refuses to  _show _ he's been startled as he leans in and does, indeed, kiss his angel on the lips. He tastes like the sea, but then so does Crowley's mouth. He loves the eating of oysters too.

Aziraphale is sweetly pink when Crowley draws back again, and the setting sun makes him glow even more.

“You're a bold one,” Crowley says.

“I am not,” Aziraphale counters, and downs another oyster, closing his eyes and breathing deep as he explores each layer of flavour. “I've been _the_ Southern pansy for as long as the concept existed.”

“I know,” Crowley says. He has never said, but he worries about Aziraphale, now and then through the years. Southern pansies are not always well-loved by the world. But if Aziraphale has suffered anything from it, he's never let Crowley know, and does not seem the worse for it.

Still. Crowley kisses Aziraphale's knuckles impulsively, and dares the world to come at them.

What comes instead is another round of oysters on their bed of ice. Aziraphale deigns to try one with tabasco, pronounces it all right, and they share the rest raw, explosions of sweet, subtle breaths of the sea filling their bodies through taste and smell.

Pudding is required, of course. There hadn't been any on offer at their first meal together all those centuries ago, but there is now. Aziraphale orders a panna cotta, and Crowley gets something involving dark chocolate in a tart, that promises to be moreish and rich and not too sweet.

It is all of these things, and Crowley, who usually takes a few bites and pushes his plate over to Aziraphale, contemplates keeping on. It is complex in the way oysters aren't: tamed and careful and ordered. Nothing like the sea.

“Oh, you must try this.” Aziraphale says this about everything he eats, ever, and he holds out his spoon to Crowley.

It has taken them  _both_ several thousand years to learn that this is a way for Aziraphale to say 'I love you'. That his angel had been just as surprised to work this out is the only thing that keeps Crowley from completely being ashamed at his own stupidity.

He tastes the spoonful of course, flicking his tongue out first to make Aziraphale sigh, and it  _is_ good – sweet and rich and just a little burnt-sugar to keep it from being cloying. The metaphors he can draw from this are left to another day.

“Now you,” Crowley says. “Though I don't know it's really your style.” He holds out a forkful, and feeds his angel.

Aziraphale's eyes close in pleasure, and he smiles. “It tastes like you are,” he says, unafraid of metaphors.

Crowley tries to roll his eyes; instead they kiss, tasting their own sweets on each others' mouths.

Crowley is never eating dessert any other way again.

Their B&B room smells of the sea, fresh and chilly when they get in. It's late; they lingered over dinner, and then after-dinner drinks, and Crowley is ready to sleep. Even Aziraphale, who views sleep as the kind of hobby you pick up because your partner does it and you want to be interested in their interests, looks a bit fuzzy around the edges.

Also, for him, sleep meant a whole new wardrobe he could carefully assemble, and he has done so. Silk pyjamas, of course, and an antique kimono over top of it while he makes them a last cup of tea to share in bed.

Crowley, who sleeps bare and always has, watches Aziraphale putter around, pouring the little cups of herbal tea, one last comfort in a day full of them. He's taken his sunglasses off, and when Aziraphale turns around, his angel smiles at snake-eyes that have been tracking his every move. “Here you are, love,” he says, and kneels on the other side of the bed, taking a moment for Crowley to be ready to get his tea.

The first time he'd called Crowley love, it had been without much thought; it was any regular day and Crowley had done something kind, gotten a book down or fixed Aziraphale a mug of cocoa or something of the sort.

Aziraphale had looked up after a strange silence to find Crowley standing there, frozen in place. “Love?” he'd asked again, and in self-defence Crowley had turned into a snake faster than Aziraphale had ever seen him do.

“Oh,” he had said kindly, realizing what had just happened. “Oh, my dear. You're not used to that, are you?” He'd held out his arms and the snake had come slithering into them, winding and weaving around Aziraphale's body.

“Poor thing,” Aziraphale had said, and petted a snakey head that rested on his shoulder. “We'll both be quiet for a little bit, all right? Let me just finish this, and you rest right here and feel your feelings. I've got you, Crowley.”

At least now when Aziraphale calls him anything other than 'my dear', Crowley doesn't transform into a snake, or disappear for a few hours. If they are in public he doesn't even react very much. When it's just them, though, sometimes he needs a moment.

He takes his mug, hands sliding over Aziraphale's, and gets a kiss for his troubles too.

“What shall we do tomorrow, dear heart?” This one is a little safer; just a step from 'my dear'.

“Lie in bed. Ssssleep in.” Crowley yawns and settled back very happily against a mound of pillows. “Fancy dinner.”

Aziraphale laughs softly. “You do that. I want to go for a ramble, there's a wonderful path right here and on the map there's some Norman ruins and a burial cairn along it.” He kisses the top of Crowley's head. “I'll be back for a fancy dinner with you, of course.”

Crowley hisses pleasantly; he likes it when they have little adventures apart, and then tell each other about it.

“Drink your tea and go to sleep, there's a love,” Aziraphale scolds, and Crowley does, and then it's the two of them under the covers, warm and snug against the night air.

Aziraphale strokes his demon's hair, and smiles, and thinks about oysters, and love, and thousands of years.

**Author's Note:**

> Romans fuckin loved their oysters, man. You can always tell the oyster stall when you're excavating a Roman site.
> 
> I think Aziraphale is semi-quoting Léon-Paul Fargue; I mostly remember that line from a New Yorker piece which, in its turn, taught me how to eat raw oysters. Whoever said it first, it's very true.
> 
> (There is also a wee tip o' the nib to Spartacus in the title, of course. Although there was no blue filter, and one does have to wonder about what kind of effort either of them were making, for it to be oysters...)
> 
> dietraumerei.tumblr.com


End file.
